Keith Hartman Monkey Stories

 

Publisher: CreateSpace (April 23, 2009)

I had the pleasure of stumbling upon Keith Hartman while hiding in the library stacks for some peace and quiet one day.  I found this little gem The Gumshoe, the Witch, and the Virtual Corpse. I read the original edition from 2001.  I loved it so much that I waited three weeks for the sequel to arrive into my library.   Both books were page turners. 

The original books had very strange technical programs.  I do not believe the publishers

Publisher: CreateSpace (December 8, 2009)

 hired a copy editor for the editions that I read. If you do not like reading errors like "cockpot" for "crockpit"  or "your" when "you're" is required, then I suggest that you read the 2009 editions of the books. At least, I hope those pesky errors were corrected.  If not, someone needs to hire a gay detective to find a copy editor. 


Oh, did I mention that this story has a gay detective?  
No. That would be the gumshoe mentioned in the titles.  The witch is his partner's friend and I never did understand who or what is a virtual corpse.
I loved the books.  I loved them so much that I want to the author to make more just for me.  Besides, he left a number of unfinished story lines in both books.  Shame on you Hartman for teasing me like that.
I like to tell you about his writing.  Freaking amazing.  Hartman has a gift. In this scene, the detective brings in the client's boyfriend to close the case.  You know what kind of case.

Skye was standing there, waiting.  I looked back at Charles. I have seen men who were being shot at who didn't look half as scared as he did. 

It is 2024, scientists have found the gene for homosexuality.  Charter schools have formed to perpetuate religious exclusivity or maybe the public school system finally just gave up.  The media creates a new boogeyman for every grassroots cause.  There is the Baptist News Network Religion which attacks everyone different.   The Cherokee nation is attempting to win back its rightful historical lands with help from China (who is tired of the US criticizing their stance on Tibet). Religious and sexual preferences have redistricted communities.  Advances in technology have virtually eliminated privacy.  And important people have a murderous need to protect themselves from the hint of a scandal. 

Hold on, isn't that happening now?  
 

• Facebook releases private information to third party applications, again.  
• A proposed Islamic community center has created huge opposition from some Christian organizations. 
• Don't Ask Don't Tell and Gay marriage are becoming constitutional issues.  
• A 2010 political candidate has been accused of witchcraft.  
• The Teaparty.  
• A well known minister has been accused of having homosexual relationships with minors.  
• Another candidate has been outed as a Nazi LARPer
• The MPAA just announced the difference between "male nudity" and plain ordinary "nudity."  (wtf?) 

All of it madness....  It is as if the psychic Hartman wrote his book in 2001 so that a reader can pick it up today and think, "This guy is like the Star Trek writers.  How did he know all this would become true? "

These books have all of it, nude pagans, gay hustlers, transvestite Shamans, mad artists, Baptist militia, a female pope, "devil-worshiping anti-Christian conspiracy" theory touting televangelists, artificial wombs, cloned actors, a cartoon animal totems and palmtops (forget the laptop). 

Oh. You want to know about the stories?

The Gumshoe and his psychic partner solve mysteries.  There you go. 
Seriously.  The stories are told from the viewpoints of various characters. This style takes some getting used to.  Despite this, the character's voices define this world full of its ironies and Hartman's social commentary. 

From the book jackets (I included the original artwork)

Meisha Merlin Pub., 1999

Welcome to 21st century Atlanta. During your stay, depending on your tastes, you can cruise gay midtown (I hear that the Inquisition Health Club has introduced manacles and chains to the aerobics class) or check out the Reverend-Senator Stonewall's headquarters at Freedom Plaza (watch out for the Christian Militia guarding it, though) or attend a sky-clad Wiccan sabbat (by invitation only). Avoid the courthouse, where the Cherokee have turned out in full war-paint to renegotiate a nineteenth century land deal. Also stay away from all cemeteries, at least until the police find out why someone is disinterring and crucifying corpses.

Meisha Merlin Pub,  2001

What had started as a simple case involving identical quintuplet actors cloned from the frozen corpse of a dead movie star was suddenly getting complicated. The pushy stage mom was to be expected, but the secret agents from the Cherokee nation came as a bit of a surprise, as did the lethal martial artist in the clown mask who had broken into his office. Nor had Drew planned on finding himself in the middle of a political death match between competing tele-ministeries. Besides, Drew had a personal score to settle, a little matter involving a privatized version of the KGB, a ring of male prostitutes, and a vampire sex cult.

I found it particularly humorous that the Baptists in his novels abort fetuses testing positive for the gay gene, assert that homosexuality is only found amongst those other evil religions (Catholic, Wiccan, Unitarian, etc.), and adopt non-gay embryos in order to provide them with a good home.   But that is just me.  
Love all the little children if they are straight and Baptist.  Come on, you know someone just like that.

I give this book an A.  I give the author a big fat D for not writing more stories about the Gumshoe and his psychic partner.  He has a great story and about 1/2 dozen open plots.  His version of Atlanta is unique, pretentious, fragmented and delightful.    I would want to visit it but I don't know where I would fit in.

The Virgin Spring: Read and Review

Podcast by one of our reviewers

Don't Shrug, Atlas!

Hello all, it's been a while since I've reviewed.  Fear not, I have been reading.  I'll try to get a few posts up here in the next few days.  I know the general tint of this blog is to review books about paranormal romance, which I appreciate in small portions.  However, recently I've been reading all sorts of things.  So, hold onto your hats and let's jump into Ayn Rand's masterpiece Atlas Shrugged.

This book is set in the industrial age.  There are many great men, and one woman, doing many great things.  Mining copper, harvesting oil, building cars, buildings, railroads, cities.  Then, the looters start to take over.  Men and women fighting reason with illogic, and for some reason winning.  The common people don't know what to do, but as "who is John Galt?"  There are dozens of characters, but only a handful relevant to the plot. (May I just say that this book is enormous? It is 1063 pages with 6-7 pt font.  It took me 5 weeks of round trip commute reading to make it through.  So, whatever shortcuts I take in describing the plot, characters and so forth, I believe I have earned by actually reading the whole damn thing.)
Ok, so we've got Dagny Taggart, Hank Readen, Francisco d'Anconia, and John Galt.  Dagny runs the largest and most successful railroad.  Hank Rearden, through research and years of hard work, has created his own super strong and super light type of metal, Francisco is the heir to an international copper dynasty, and John Galt is the man who will stop the motor of the world.  Rather, John Galt is a brilliant inventor who was able to create a motor run on static electricity, basically the key to perpetual, free power.  But what had happened was, Galt began to see a change in the world where men he called "looters" were living off the hard work of those who were actually inventing and investing.  The looters were starting to take over everything through a grossly engorged sense of humanism, in which doing things for ones' own ambition and self worth was meaningless; all was to be done for the good of the common people. Galt realized that his hard work was going to be free-loaded by senseless morons.  So, he quit and vowed to stop the motor of the world so that the looters would perish in the peril of their own creation.  Then he went to all the other industrialists and convinced them to quit as well.  That's basically it.  They all end up quitting, and after some very long speeches, run off to the Atlantas Galt designed.

However, there were some pretty intense romantic triangles.  Dagny and Francisco grew up together.  They were each other's first.  Then Galt got Francisco to quit, so he had to sort of push Dagny out of his life so he wouldn't hurt her.  But he saved himself for her.  And really, she was the only woman left in the world worth laying.  Eventually, he reveals that he's still totes into her, but not before Hank Readen gets to her.  Hank and Dagny were working together to build more railroads with his Readen Metal and eventually they realize they are the only people in the world worth sexing too. So, they start up a really steamy love affair, steamy because Hank is married, and Dagny had that thing with Francisco and she's the only woman left in the world worth boning.  For reals.

Then, if you didn't think that love triangle was perfect enough, John Galt reveals himself to Dagny, and she realizes that HE is the one she has always loved, and there is no one else in the world anywhere near as good as John Galt.  The thing I don't get is that Francisco and Hank are pretty much entirely ok with this.  As if, obvs, if they were gay they would totally be after Galt themselves.  Ok, but in the midst of Dagny being shuffled around between the only 3 men left in the world with sleeping with, there's a great quote:
          "Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.  Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself...sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment, an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire."

I mean, I apologize to all the feminists out there offended by the male-centric language, but really this is a very empowering statement.  The value that you give yourself is betrayed in your sexual partners.  I think that's very true, even though at that point, they were both talking about Dagny (and they didn't know yet that they were both talking about Dagny.  Poor Hank and Francisco, at least they had her for a time.)

There was a really long speech (like 30 pages) by John Galt that I didn't read in it's entirity.  It was just too damn long.  The other thing that made me angry was that one of my favorite minor characters, Eddie Willers, totally got the shaft at the end of the book.  He didn't get to go to Atlantas, he got abandoned in the middle of Arizona.  He grew up with Dagny and Francisco, why did he get abandoned at the end.  I'm expecting all our readers who have encountered this book in an academic setting to have a good answer for me.  Get on that.

Overall, I'm giving it an A-.  It was enough to get my attention at 7:30 in the morning, it was not enough to convince me to read a 30 page speech at 6-7 point font.  Show, don't tell, Ayn Rand.  Show, don't tell.